I despise most of NB's beers, but i would agree that their 1554 is generally pretty good. i didn't find it to be that roasty, although chocolate malt is not out of the question.

Even in the description from beeradvocate for the Belgian Dark Ale:

Quote:

Belgian Darks offer a massive range of characters. Colors play within the amber to light brown to deep garnet hues, with thick, rocky heads of great retention. Aromas can be anywhere from traces of yeast, spiced, malty, floral and even slightly intoxicating. Flavors from dry and spiced, to sweet and malty. Most have a low level of bitterness.

ha, i was coming on here this morning to post about this beer! It's in my top 5 commercially available beers. I love it!

the lager yeast is what throws me off. Is it a hybrid? Lager yeast @ ale temps? because they call it an ale, but everything i read says lager yeast. I'm not much for clone recipes just cause i like the uniqueness of my own stuff, but i really wanna copy this one.

This thread has some great info on NB's 1554. It has some comments/brewing tips from the brewer at NB. No roasted barley...either debittered black or dehusked-carafa. A subtle, unknown spice addition.

EDIT: Here are some tips from NB (itt linked above):

Quote:

I am glad to hear you like 1554 so much. I'm not going to give you style guidelines because I think they're a bunch of hooey.

Malt: The basic idea is to brew a big beer, relatively high gravity with a lot of unfermentable content to keep the body high and the alcohol moderate. Some 2-row, but a lot of Munich, Caramel, and Carapils malts. Use chocolate and black malt extremely sparingly, a little bit goes a long way for color. If there were a black malt that had no bittering effect, that would probably be the one to use.

Hops: Bitterness is moderate to high, enough to offset all that extra sweetness. Water is kept soft to keep the bitterness quite mellow. There is no aroma hop in 1554. If anything, you could put in some kind of spice at flavor threshold.

Yeast: Lager yeast, ale temperatures. Particular strain doesn't matter, as long as it is a low sulfur producer.

Finishing wise, this beer is straightforward.

Hope this helps, good luck and happy brewing.

__________________Early brewers were primarily women, mostly because it was deemed a woman's job. Mesopotamian men, of some 3,800 years ago, were obviously complete assclowns and had yet to realize the pleasure of brewing beer.- Beer Advocate

That thread is a great read. I love threads like that. There was a wheat beer thread like that which taught me worlds about my beloved hefewiessen.

I love 1554 as well... may do this at some point.

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